


we can take the world

by dogworldchampion



Category: New Girl
Genre: F/M, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Pre-Season/Series 07, Pregnancy, i just really had to write aggressive fluff, listen y'all, way too emotional about this couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 16:45:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14193303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogworldchampion/pseuds/dogworldchampion
Summary: How Aly ended up a married adult living in a loft with roommates and a bathroom stall, she's not sure. How she ended up trapped in said bathroom stall with Schmidt doing his hair outside while a pregnancy test develops next to her, she's even less certain. She can't exactly say she's happy about it (or, at least, she won't admit it).





	we can take the world

**Author's Note:**

> hi!! so this is my first time writing for ng - i just finished, like, four consecutive binges of the series and couldn't get this idea out of my head. let me know what you think - either here, or on tumblr (where i'm @the-pontiac-bandit)! 
> 
> (big ups to tumblr users elsaclack and jakelovesamy, who have saved my ass like 50 times writing this, and to johnnyswim for putting take the world on all my playlists)

Aly is sitting in the stall, feet kicked up against the door ( _how_ she ended up a married adult woman living in a loft with a bathroom stall she doesn’t quite understand. She _used_ to have covered parking). The timer on her phone is running, ticking off the seconds as a white stick develops in the corner. She can see it out of the corner of her eye, so she does her best to look anywhere else, to think about anything other than the timer counting down on her phone or the pee-soaked pregnancy test exerting an irresistible pull on her gaze. She isn’t particularly successful.

They’d talked about this before, of course. Once when Winston was still sweaty from a bobcat costume (and from the celebration after) and they were curled up in bed, planning their new futures together. And once this time last year, when Winston, uncharacteristically serious, spent a day in careful manipulation to ensure the loft would be empty at dinner so they could talk about starting their family.

But then she’d found out she was on the shortlist for a promotion, and then Nick and Jess had gotten engaged, and then her new job was busier than she’d expected, and then...and then...and then Jess had grabbed a box of tampons during a Target run and then Aly got a sinking feeling in her stomach because she hadn’t needed one in _weeks_ and then that sinking feeling turned quickly into the violent nausea that had been dogging her for days and then— _oh._

She’s staring out the pebbled glass of the small bathroom window, trying to identify indistinct shapes on the street below (trying to think about _nothing_ ) when she’s jerked out of her reverie by a far-too-familiar voice humming indistinctly. She doesn’t need to peer through the crack to know it’s accompanied by a well-tailored suit and a custom shower caddy with at least twelve hair products.

_Schmidt._

She can feel the seconds ticking down with each heartbeat, but she spends several of them paralyzed. She had been alone in the apartment - she’d _waited_ for that. It was just past noon on a Tuesday, but somehow, Schmidt was in the bathroom of a loft he no longer lived in, apparently to _do his hair._

She remembers the timer on her phone with just seconds to spare. She’s fumbling for _cancel_ as she watches the seconds tick from 14 to 7. She almost sighs in relief - Schmidt doesn’t seem to have noticed he’s not alone, and she’d prefer to keep it that way - but she manages to suppress the noise. And then, the reason she’d set a timer in the first place forces itself back into her consciousness, driving her heart rate through the roof and stealing her breath.

She tries to turn slowly, to stay calm and measured, as though controlling her movements will control the response. But then she’s leaning, snatching the test, unable to stand another second of suspense. She turns it over in her hand, her heart skipping a beat, and immediately brings the test to eye level, to see the two pink lines at close range. She stares them down like they’re a perp she’s interrogating, as if her scariest glare (the one that makes criminals cry but makes Winston weirdly giggly) will force one line out of existence.

Schmidt’s humming has transferred to full on beatboxing, using the word _chutney_ as a rhythm, which she’s thankful for only because it provides cover for the small sigh she lets out as she drops the arm holding the test. She leans sideways against the wall of the stall, praying that the emotions knotting her stomach don’t make their way back up her digestive tract, dragging her breakfast with them. She wants nothing more than to sprint for her car and drive to the precinct, drag Winston outside, and spill it all to her partner. But outside the door, she can hear Schmidt uncapping the first bottle and apparently beginning to narrate the process to his hair follicles, so she settles in for a long wait.

 

* * *

 

 

Twenty three minutes and forty seven seconds later, Schmidt announces loudly over the god-awful noise he calls music that his hair can get ready for step six. Aly knows it’s been twenty three minutes and forty seven seconds because she’s been timing the ritual, but based on the early markers of insanity clouding the corners of her brain, she’d guess it’s been at least three million years.

At minute three, she’d typed out a text to Winston explaining her predicament, knowing he’d find it funny, that he’d do that silly little giggle he saves for when she’s truly gotten herself stuck. But then she’d realized, finger hovering over the send button, that text was probably not the best way to tell him about his impending fatherhood. So she waited.

At minute twelve, she’d rediscovered the joy that had bubbled up in her chest last year, when she’d seriously pictured for the first time a little boy with Winston’s kind eyes and penchant for terrible pranks. The first knot in her belly untangles, and her fingers drift from the windowsill, where they’d been silently but furiously tapping a rhythm, to her still-flat stomach.

At minute seventeen, she’s established a comprehensive work plan (what can she say? She’s efficient) and resolved the fifteen most likely potential conflicts in the coming months. She’d started drafting an email to their captain, to set the wheels in motion for the mountain of paperwork before her (who knows, she might be able to finish it all by the time Schmidt finishes his hair care routine in _six weeks_ ). But then she remembers that her captain is at the precinct. With Winston. Who should probably know first.

At minute nineteen, Aly realizes that she _totally_ could have flushed when Schmidt came in and snuck the test out in the waistband of her pajama shorts. There was no need for her to sit in painful, torturous silence, listening to him lovingly address eleven specific “hair regions” (she misses the days when he had a job). She hits her head against the stall wall in frustration, and sure enough, he’s far too immersed to notice.

At minute twenty three, Aly has lost all her lives on Candy Crush, and her thumb is hovering over Winston’s name in her phone, vain thoughts of whispering the news into the microphone riding a tide of rapidly amplifying excitement over all the change to come. Every additional minute that Winston doesn’t know feels like an eternity, and she would literally slit Schmidt’s throat if it meant she could be bouncing on a trampoline with Winston to celebrate (after a brief google search about the feasibility and safety of trampoline jumping while pregnant, she revises the thought).

And so, at minute twenty four, Aly decides her only logical solution is to army crawl out.

Schmidt is so immersed in his routine that he probably won’t notice, she reasons. And she can be quiet when she wants to. So, test in hand, doing everything in her power to block out questions of when someone last cleaned the bathroom floor, she drops to her elbows and knees and lowers herself slowly to the floor, suddenly thankful for the small stature that her roommates love to mock. As she inches forward, ducking her head below the stall door, she silently lifts a prayer to whoever’s listening that Schmidt - currently mid-dance using some kind of electric hairbrush as a microphone - stays this distracted.

 

* * *

 

She’s so close she can taste it. The fingers of her free hand are reaching for the threshold, inches from the hardwood of the hallway, when the beat of Schmidt’s music changes. All of a sudden, he’s spinning on one heel, jar of hair chutney in hand. She freezes, breath held, as though if she’s still enough his eyes will pass right over her. Tragically, if unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work, and all she can do is stare open-mouthed, pressed flat against the bathroom floor, as Schmidt falls backwards, his hair chutney flying across the room to crack against the far wall, and lets out an ungodly shriek.

“Aly!” His voice has risen at least two octaves, to a pitch that makes her want to clap her hands over her ears. “My chutney! That cost--do you have any idea--you _hooligans_ \--”

He’s livid, his face slowly turning red, as he leaps over her body across the room to start scraping it off the wall and onto his head, muttering about the importance of proper hair hydration and disgusting roommates, but he loses steam quickly as the futility of saving his chutney washes over him. She can see in his face the processing as he moves beyond his chutney, dripping down the far wall in a trail of purple slime that will definitely stain, wondering why on earth an actual _resident of this apartment_ is crawling across the bathroom floor. He scrutinizes her closely as she pushes up to her feet.

“What--how long have you--why--is that--is that a _pregnancy test_?”

Aly had almost forgotten about the little white stick still clutched in her hand. She decides deflection might be the best course of action. “Why on earth are you in _my_ apartment at--” she glances at her watch, “--12:34 on a Tuesday afternoon?”

She’s inching for the door as he mumbles some incoherent answer about mirror size and sink depth, considering making a break for the front table where she can picture her keys in a haphazard pile next to a picture taken by some unfortunate ex of a room full of people double-fisting beers on top of furniture and shouting _FDR._ But her feet, already beginning to move, suddenly stop cold when Schmidt retorts:

“Are you _pregnant_?”

Something about hearing the words out loud stops her in her tracks. All plans for deflection, or for straight-up avoidance, run for the hills as a mixture of joy and apprehension and nerves and excitement and _love_ for this thing she doesn’t even _know_ yet all wash over her at once. The word echoes, reverberating around all the corners of her brain she’d thought atrophied while she learned about the intricacies of Schmidt-level hair care. She hasn’t managed to find her voice, but her free hand drifts reflexively to her stomach while she belatedly tries to shift the test behind her back, out of sight. It’s all the confirmation Schmidt needs.

“You _are_! A sibling for Ferguson! A miraculous chocolate-vanilla swirl!” And then his arms are around her back as the artificial blueberry smell of his hair products engulfs her. And she’s laughing breathlessly into his shoulder as her arms move to hug him back. At the feel of the stick making contact with his shoulder, though, he jumps back. “Pee stick! Pee stick!”

“Right, right,” she acknowledges, still giggling in some combination of shock and disbelief and overwhelming happiness. “The pee stick.”

“Does Winston know?” If she didn’t know him better, if she hadn’t seen the douchebag jar in person, she’d swear his voice was cracking (maybe Ruthie’s changed him more than he wants to admit. But she shakes that thought to the back of her head).

“No. I’m on my way to tell him now. So if you don’t mind, I’m gonna--and you can finish whatever--just, please, _please_ be done when I’m back from my shift.”

“You’re just going to tell him _now_? At _work_? When Cece was pregnant, I bought out the entire florist! Pregnancy is grand, a miraculous occurrence, Allison! You can’t leave the reveal to some germy precinct hallway!”

“My name isn’t Allison.”

“Alexandra! Aurelia! Eulalie!”

“Really, just Aly is fine.”

“Alright, _Aly_. The point is you can’t just _tell_ him! Where’s the ceremony? The pomp? The circumstance?”

She sighs, but she can hear her sister’s voice echoing his. And then her brain is providing her with flashes of picnics with a common cactus in Malibu and a bobcat costume in a public bathroom and the choreographed dance he led at their wedding and a thousand other silly moments. And then half-baked plans are forming, before she’s even given them permission to exist, of him opening a present with a onesie or finding the pregnancy test in a backpack confiscated during an arrest, and the way his eyes would light up is making her heart skip a beat. So instead of doing the sane thing, instead of bolting for the door or _punching this idiot in the face_ , she settles onto one hip, arms crossed.

“Any ideas?”

 

* * *

 

Mercifully, when she arrives at the precinct for her afternoon shift, Winston is out after a perp. She can’t focus on any work-related task for more than thirty seconds at a stretch, and she spends the better part of the afternoon alternating between reading mommy blogs about pregnancy that make her want to tear her hair out and planning how she’ll tell Winston on an elaborate Excel spreadsheet that is getting increasingly complicated but not bringing her any closer to a solution that perfectly toes the line between loving exchange and psychotic prank that Winston finds so effortlessly.

By early that evening, only an hour from the end of her shift, she’s begun drafting an email to the Los Angeles Zoo, to find out how much it would cost her to rent their new baby panda and its mother for the day, as part of some yet-to-be-determined baby-panda-baby-Bishop reveal. She’s not quite sure what she’d _do_ yet, but she knows that Winston cried over the panda when they had to work the press day and it’s _really_ cute and it’s a baby and she’s _having_ a baby and she’s praying for inspiration to strike and--

“Whatcha up to?” Winston’s voice sings into her ear, his breath tickling her neck. She almost falls backwards out of her chair, clicking away from the letter what she knows must be just a second too slowly. She knows his face so well that as she turns to face him, she can _see_ the split second where he processes the words he read, filing them away for analysis at a later date.

But then she’s just looking at his face and it’s so _stupidly_ cute and she’s got butterflies in her stomach worse than when he told her she’d be a beautiful bride someday and for a split second she’s worried it’s nausea but it passes and then she realizes she’s _definitely_ been staring at him for at least three seconds too long with a dopey smile on her face. So she sticks her tongue out and crosses her eyes instead, and his smile brightens as he throws back his head in laughter. He’s turning to walk away, to go back to work (because they are at _work_ ), but before she knows it she’s on her feet, grabbing him by one arm.

She loves the look on his face as he turns, mostly confused with a hint of the surprise that makes his eyes pop. And then she’s pulling his head down to kiss him, and the last time they did this at work they were in an evidence locker and they got caught and almost lost their partnership, but they’re married now and she’s so happy she can’t quite bring herself to care. He stills, and then pulls her closer, moving his lips gently against hers with one big hand pressed between her shoulder blades, holding her close for exactly five seconds longer than would be strictly appropriate. From the corner of her mind, she can hear the wolf whistles of their fellow officers, most of whom have stopped working to watch the scene.

He breaks away first, leaning his forehead against hers. “So, what was that for?” he asks, not quite able to pull off the reproachful look he’s going for.

“Just wanted to kiss you,” is the only reply she can come up with, half-focused on how close Winston’s hands have drifted to the baby he doesn’t know exists yet.

“I know I’m irresistible, but we should probably keep our hands to ourselves, Officer Nelson,” he retorts, breaking away to continue towards their captain’s office, skepticism and happiness etched in equal measure on his features. She manages to swat his head as he retreats, and turns back to her desk, resigning herself to a long evening of catcalls and reminders that no matter how often she sleeps here, it isn’t her bedroom.

 

* * *

 

By the next afternoon, Aly has become so weirdly stilted around Winston that she’s sure there’s no way he doesn’t know. She’s so distracted she can’t even muster an eye roll at the grainy cell phone pictures of her and Winston kissing that have been printed out and taped to her desktop, her captain’s office, and even the mirrors of the women’s bathroom. That morning, when she’d woken up at 6 to throw up (for the _tenth_ day in a row), she’d shouted him out of the bathroom. Over breakfast, she’d panicked and accidentally-on-purpose dropped the cup of coffee he handed her, shattering a mug and making them both late for work. And she’d been so engrossed by her spreadsheet all morning that she’d barely looked up when he asked her for help on the work they were _supposed_ to be doing.

She’s learned a good bit about pregnancy in the past twenty-four hours, most of it on her phone under the covers when Winston was asleep. She’d learned that, by her best estimate, their baby is now as big as a raspberry, and she’s considered everything from renting a raspberry costume to purchasing a giant statue of a raspberry on the internet (a bargain at only $8,000) to removing the furniture from their bedroom and filling it with as many raspberries as $8,000 can buy. Somehow, none of those feel quite right, and they’re all over budget.

By that evening, she’s getting desperate. Raspberries have turned into a full litter of kittens for Ferguson to adopt, which have turned into purchasing a house and decorating a nursery, which somehow turned into saving tomorrow’s vomit in a jar for the announcement. She shudders in horror at the thought (and swallows hard to choke down a fresh round). Part of her wants to simply tell Winston, wants to get to curl up in his arms while he laughs into her hair, fancy announcement be damned. But the rest of her can’t quite shake the need to _surprise_ him, so she finds herself ready to tear her hair out, carefully positioned on the couch with her socks clad in fuzzy feet in his lap so that he can’t see her computer screen, where she’s doing extensive research into the biggest loaf of bread available for purchase (she’s trying for a play on “bun in the oven”, although these loaves are far too large for any domestic oven).

She’s vaguely aware of the click in the lock and the creak in the front door that means Nick or Jess is home, but she doesn’t bother looking up - she’s far too busy drafting an email to the owner of a roadside statue of a stork in Nevada about nearby hotel options. It’s not until he stops by the couch that she acknowledges his presence at all.

“Hey, guys, wanna go grab a drink?”

“Nick, you just _came_ from the bar,” she points out, hoping that will be the end of it.

“I just came back from bar _tending_ , Aly, there’s a very big difference. You see, it’s all about your state of mind -”

“I don’t care.”

“ _C’mon_ , I guarantee you guys aren’t doing anything better right now! What are you even _doing,_ anyway?” he asks as he cranes his neck, like changing his angle will allow him to see through the backs of their laptop screens.

She and Winston simultaneously mutter noncommittal answers about work, neither of them making eye contact with their roommate.

“No, it’s Wednesday. That means Winston is editing pictures of Ferguson for his weekly Instagram post. You should stop playing with the contrast, by the way, that way you can use that hashbrown no filter thingy.”

“There’s no way you don’t know that it’s hash _tag_ , Miller.”

“Which brings me to _Aly_.” He’s got that look in his eye, the one she’s come to associate with his sudden fixation on solving a self-created mystery.  “You’re not normally on your computer this late on a weeknight when you don’t have a case, and I know you don’t have one because you’ve been coming and going at all your normal times lately.  Which obviously means you’re--” he starts to move around the couch, to catch a glimpse of her computer screen, and she’s just a second too slow in slamming her laptop shut. “You’re emailing--”

“My captain! Nick, can I borrow you for a sec?” she inserts, far too quickly to sound casual.

“I thought you said you and I don’t ‘have that kind of relationship’,” he replies, clearly caught off guard, but she’s already lept off the couch, kicking her husband in the stomach in the process, and grabbed him by one arm, her laptop clutched tightly in the other. She’s dragging him towards his bedroom before he even has a chance to react, leaving Winston gaping on the couch. As they turn the corner, though, she can hear him muttering something about Ferguson’s unique fur patterns requiring _more_ contrast, not _less._

When they turn into his room, she slams his door behind her.

“I know trying to look at other people’s screens is kind of a dick move, but it’s not _illegal_ , okay, I know my rights--”

She cuts him off before he can get any further down that rabbit hole. “I’m trying to prank Winston, and I’m bad at it. I need your help.”

“Why do you need to prank your husband? I thought your anniversary was in April…”

“Does it matter?”

“In terms of pranking?” He seems to ponder it for a second, thoughtful gaze drifting to the ceiling, before snapping back down to her face. “Not for Winston, no.” he shrugs, shoving his hands in his pockets and waiting expectantly for her to continue.

“Anyway, I’m running low on ideas, and nothing is clicking. What would _you_ do to prank Winston?”

“You’ve come to the right person for assistance with this matter.” he says, backing away from her slowly. “In fact, you’ve come...to the master.” He pauses, hands held out on either side of him like she’s seen pastors of megachurches pose, and her eyes feel like they’re bulging with the effort it takes to keep from rolling them at him. He quickly drops the stance. “Lemme just grab the binder--”

“The...the binder?” she asks, but he doesn’t answer the question. Instead, he’s moving towards a shelf of binders in the corner, pulling off one that’s noticeably messier than the rest, shoved into one corner with lopsided labels and bent tabs.

“You have...a prank binder? Just...why?”

“Well I used to just keep ‘em on bar napkins, but then Jess suggested I put ‘em all in here to keep ‘em straight and it’s been pretty useful.” he replies, answering only half of her question as he scrolls through section after section (she’s pretty sure he even flips through a tab for Ferguson). She sighs, wondering for perhaps the trillionth time in the past three years _how_ she ended up living with these idiots.

“Anyway, Winston. He spooks easy, so you’re going to want to focus on shock factor. If I were you, I’d go for a basketball angle. Start with his old Latvian teammates - I have their numbers right here, although the international rates are a _bitch_. If you can manage to get them all to agree to fly them here, that’s your best bet. You’ll also need at least 200 basketballs, and a square acre of basketball net, but that’s hard to buy, so you might have to buy a bunch of individual nets and then sew them together. I’ll ask Jess to help you - she loves crafts. You’ll want to--”

She cuts him off, a little impressed by the first page of what’s apparently a very elaborate plan. “I don’t really think that’s what I’m going for. Got anything else?”

“Dammit - I was looking forward to seeing those guys again…” She rolls her eyes and uses one hand to motion that he continue. “Well, paying someone to kidnap him is always a great option. You can go in a lot of different direc--”

He’s cut off suddenly by Winston bursting through the door. “Miller! Just _what_ kind of relationship are you trying to have with my wife?” he shouts as the door slams into the wall, knocking several balls of yarn off the dresser behind it.

“The kind where we’re actively plotting your murder,” Aly replies automatically, face serious as Winston drops his angry facade and starts laughing.

“Nick would never murder me,” Winston sighs, before his gaze flicks from Aly’s face to Nick’s over her shoulder, his smile disappearing at once. “I know too much.”

She furrows her brow, staring at her husband, wondering what ridiculous expression is contorting Nick’s face behind her.

“I know my rights,” Nick says again, though significantly more fearful than before.

“He was helping me with some details about bar financing. For a case,” Aly fills in, saving him from what would likely have been minutes of floundering.

Winston looks suspicious, letting out a long _mhmmmmm_ and raising an eyebrow. Her mind has jumped into overdrive, thinking of every possible way to distract him.

“We don’t have any cases in a bar right now, Aly,” he points out slowly. His arms are crossed, and his expression has transformed from confusion to cockiness; he’s sure he has her dead to rights. And he does. So she pulls out all the stops.

“Hey, Winston! Wanna have sex?”

Nick groans. “Guys, we’ve talked about this. It’s Amendment 72C in the Loft Agreement - the Bishop-Nelson Public Disclosure Clause! In your room _only_!”

“Cool then,” she shrugs, doing her best to sound nonchalant. “Winston, wanna _go to our room_?”

Winston looks a little whiplashed from the sudden change in topic; his face is changing expressions approximately twice a second, shifting from confusion to arousal to deep thought and back again faster than she can recite police codes. She can tell he’s still pondering what on earth could have brought her to Nick’s room in the first place, but she also knows her husband, and she’d guessed right when she’d assumed he’d rather have sex than think about it further.

So as he grabs her hand and drags her out of the room, she mouths a thank you to Nick over her shoulder, wondering as Winston pins her against the wall in the hallway if kidnapping is really a viable option - she should really find out about hotels near the Nevada stork…

 

* * *

 

Aly should’ve known what was coming as soon as she got a public disturbance call while Winston is out on a coffee run. She _definitely_ should have known what was coming when Leahy, who volunteers to accompany her, willingly drops back and lets Aly push through the door to the abandoned warehouse that’s supposedly the site of “giant and violent game of human monopoly”. She _absolutely positively_ should have known when the warehouse is empty. But it’s not until a door on the far end opens and at least fifteen badgers come flooding out that all the pieces click together.

 _Winston_.

Later, when he asks when she knew, she’ll lie and say she’d known what he was up to all morning, will _insist_ that she didn’t jump even a little when the first badger sticks its nose out the door. But she has to mask an ounce of surprise as she calls out calmly, “Winston, where are you?”

No reply. She tries again. “Bishop! I’ll shave Ferguson tonight if you don’t get out here right now!”

A beat. Then two. And then Winston is following the badgers (who are now either sleeping or fighting in the middle of the open warehouse, the humans on the other end entirely disregarded) out the door with a shout.

She takes a second to take him in as he whoops and hollers, running through the badgers to startle them into continuing their path across the room (she turns and sees that Leahy has been dropping food strategically just behind her. Of _course_.) He’s wearing a giant badger costume, all but his face obscured by synthetic fur and a big red sweater. His arms are flailing, and she can already see the sweat glistening on his face on the warm September day. He’s out of breath by the time he reaches her, so she gives him a moment to catch up as she turns on the safety and re-holsters her gun.

When he finally takes his hands off his knees and stands back up, she gives him a look. “Wh--just...I mean...I know I signed up for…” She sighs. “ _Why_?”

“Badgers are _objectively_ the best prank animal, Aly! They’re small enough to be easily transportable, but big enough for effective attack! Random enough for full shock value, but _instantly_ recognizable! Remarkably aggressive, but they’re only rabid, like, 20% of the time!”

“Haven’t you...used these before?” She’s conjuring vague memories of a photo album filled with pictures of an angry badger and a collapsed chuppah, Winston tangled in the middle, and stories about arranged marriages and vents and Jess’ crush on Nick. “Running out of new ideas, Bishop?”

“Hey!” He’s indignant at her implication that he’s getting rusty. “That was _one time_! You weren’t even _there_! And this was the _perfect_ prank if you hadn’t _ruined_ it - the badgers were gonna--”

She cuts him off before he can build up too much steam - she wants to know _as little as possible_ about what awaited further in the warehouse. “Badgers are fine, Bishop, but _why_ were you gonna prank me?”

“You were gonna prank me!” he practically shouts, hands flailing wildly as he explains. “I had to strike first! You can’t prank Prank Sinatra! He’s _everywhere_ , Aly! All the time, everywhere, Prank S. is _there_!”

“You _idiot_. I wasn’t going to _prank_ you.”

“Marriages aren’t built on _lies_ , Aly! You were _so_ gonna prank me! I heard you asking Nick - did you decide to go with the Latvians? Or the kidnapping? I should warn you, if you called Genadijs, he _will_ poop on our welcome mat as a sign of respect - there’s some weird head injuries that come from outdoor basketball on a hill, and--”

“I didn’t call the Latvians,” she replies, deeply glad they’ve never saved enough money to go back and visit Latvia.

“Okay, so the kidnapping. You’ve been weird for _days_ \- all those emails! I knew something was coming, so I had to act!”

His eyes are a little wild, and she can see the glisten of sweat turning into beads that are starting to run down his cheeks inside what she’s sure is a literal oven of a mascot suit. So she takes a deep breath, trying to calm herself for what comes next. She resists the urge to bring her hand down to her abdomen, a gesture that’s become shockingly habitual in the past forty-eight hours, and instead grabs his paws.

“You’re so...so…” She tries to find the word for the combination of affection and frustration that’s welling up in her chest, but she can’t find a single word to describe it. So she finishes, “You’re so... _you_.”

His eyes are looking down, all attention on her now, and she sees a hint of concern there. She’s sure her cheeks are bright red, and she can feel her hands shaking in his a bit, but his eyes ground her as she whispers the next sentence. “I’m pregnant, you _maniac_.”

She’s braced for a kiss, or a bear hug, or even a tackle. She’s ready for him to take a step back in shock, to ask _when_ or _how_ or _are you sure_. She’s _not_ ready for him to fall backwards, collapsing in laughter.

“Oh--you’re _preg_ \--oh, that’s a good--you really _had_ me for a sec--” and then all coherent words are lost to deep belly laughter that has him literally rolling on the ground, clutching his stomach.

“I am! I took a test and _everything_! I had to army crawl out behind Schmidt - did you know he still does his hair in our loft while Ruthie’s at school? And I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you all week!”

“Pregnant--Schmidt in our bathroom--oh you’re _good,_ Nelson! _Good_!”

She realizes she’s not going to get through until he manages to calm down. So she walks over and stands by his head, looking down with her arms crossed, waiting patiently for him to catch up.

Slowly but surely, he starts to catch his breath. And that’s when he finally notices that she’s not laughing with him. “Hahahaha...ha...ha…...ha…...h- _Aly_?”

“Yep?”

“You’re….you’re…. _pregnant_?”

“Yep.”

And then he’s on his feet, pulling her up in his arms. She feels her feet leave the ground, and then she’s spinning. She can hear his laughter, somewhere on the corner of her consciousness, but it’s less loud now. It’s softer, happier, and she can hear his breath hitching on the downbeats. His arms are holding her close, and she’s deliriously happy, or maybe it’s just dizzy, but she never wants this moment to stop. Until her breakfast starts making moves in her stomach, and she’s suddenly acutely aware of the distinctly badger smell behind her and the way her stomach is churning as she spins.

A little squirming, and a few squealed _stop_ s do the trick, and her feet make contact with the ground, much to her relief. She stands for a few moments, one hand on her knee while her other holds her nose closed to block the smell. She’s doing her best to breathe deep and even through her mouth when she feels a soothing hand between her shoulder blades, rubbing gently.

“ _This_ is why you’ve been sick…” he says, his words full of a degree of awe she’d never expect from the love of her life as he watches her choke down vomit.

She doesn’t manage a reply for a few more seconds. “Yeah…” Another breath. And one more. And then she straightens. “I think it’s passed.”

“Thank God, because now I can do _this_.”

And he’s leaning in to kiss her. It’s gentle, far gentler than she can remember, like he’s scared she’ll break. Her hands have found his face, her thumbs smoothing his beard, while his hold her sides, ghosting over her stomach. He’s smiling against her lips, and she knows she’s about three seconds away from her face splitting into a smile almost as wide as his. And then he’s breaking away, leaning his forehead against hers and looking down into her eyes.

“You’re really….you’re really pregnant? It’s really happening?” His voice is quiet, as though he’s a few moments away from tears.

And she doesn’t even make an effort to swipe away the wetness she can feel below her eyes as she replies, “Yeah. Best I can guess, it’s about as big as a raspberry.”

And then he’s laughing again, a gentler chuckle, more out of happiness than humor. “A raspberry…” He trails off, then freezes entirely.

“If you’re really pregnant, we should _definitely_ get out of here.”

“What did you _do_?”

“You really don’t want to know. Suffice to say badgers and...a number of other things in this room are _definitely_ not baby-friendly. We can let Leahy clean up.”

He slings his arm around her shoulder as they turn to walk out, and she pulls him close, leaning her head against his shoulder.

“You know, I spent two whole days trying to figure out this prank thing. I really just don’t get it.”

“Oh, you are about to be _so_ outnumbered.”


End file.
